PRIMARIES: Can Anybody Solve the Puzzle?

It's a very, very questionable method of selecting presidential candidates, and actually it never does. All it does is destroy some candidates.

—Adlai Stevenson in 1958 The presidential primary season is growing closer—the first vote will be in New Hampshire on Feb. 24—and twelve declared candidates, ten Democratic and two Republican, are eagerly campaigning for support. But as they jostle for early position, they are encountering a sad fact: the new rules that were supposed to make the primaries more open and democratic have actually reduced the system to a shambles. It...